Page 37 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

"I can—"

"Both hands. On the rail, Samira!" His face was very close to hers and there was something in it she had not seen before and could not read. "I have not the time to argue with you and I have not the men to spare to fish you out of the sea. Brace and hold on."

He let go of her and was gone.

Samira stood exactly where he had left her for approximately four seconds.

Then the rain hit, and the world went white and roaring, and she went forward into it.

***

THEY WERE REEFING THE sail. She could see that much even through the rain.

Reefing meant reducing it. In a strong wind a full sail would drive a ship over onto her side or tear itself off the mast.

Six men were hauling the yard down. Others were fighting the wet canvas.

Samira reached the nearest line and put her hands on it beside a young crewman's.

He looked at her. His mouth opened.

"Pull," she said.

He pulled.

They got the cloth against the yard. Then it had to be tied, and she stopped, because the knot was not one she knew.

This was something else. Two turns taken round the timber, then the end hitched back against its own standing part and pulled hard the other way.

She watched him do it once.

Then she went to the next line along and did it herself, exactly as he had done it, and hauled it tight, and it held.

The young man looked at the knot. Then at her. Then he moved to the next one, and she went with him, and they worked forward along the yard together.

"SAMIRA!"

Torstein came down the deck at her through the rain with murder in his face.

"I told you to get to the rail!"

"You did." She did not stop working. "The bindings are different, but I have it now. Two turns and a hitch against the standing part."

"I do not care if you have—" He stopped. He looked at the four knots she had already tied. He looked at them for slightly too long. "Who showed you that?"

"He did. Once."

The young crewman went a deep and immediate red and became extremely interested in the rope in front of him.

Torstein cursed in Norn, then went back to what he was doing.

***

Chapter 15

The storm got worse.

Water was coming into the ship faster than it was going out, and Samira finally understood the thing nobody had explained to her before she came aboard: a snekkja sits very low in the water. She is built that way on purpose, so she is fast and so she can be run up onto a beach. But it means her sides are low, and in a heavy sea the waves do not break against the hull.